Tornado Pratt (11 page)

“I don’t want another drink. I just want to get this thing unsnarled.”

“Well, you can have a drink with me, can’t you? That doesn’t signify we’re gonna elope?”

“I—okay I’ll have a drink with you. Have you got any scotch? I’d prefer it.”

“Sure, I got scotch. I got practically every drink there is. You want Polish
vodka
? You can have it. Let’s go back on the terrace.”

And to prevent me refusing, he turned and hopped out there before I could speak. Sighing, I followed him back on to the amazing terrace. And then I really did gasp, Horace, for the first thing that hit my eyes was the red dome of the rising sun. Golden beams of light flared over Chicago, tipping sky-scrapers with glory and gilding clouds. Pony indifferently followed my glance.

“Worth fifty bucks a week, that view. And I’ve only seen it twice—three times now—since I been here. Take a seat, Tornado.”

“I’m fine.”

“Aw, c’mon. I don’t know what your
tastes
are but what you’re acting like is a school kid.”

Again I had to choke down rage, Horace, but I seated myself. Pony squatted down in front of me, looked up at me humbly and asked:

“Why don’t you like me, Tornado?”

“I’m going to try to explain: I let you kiss me a while back, not because it’s my style but—well, just because I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Pony’s face screwed up into an astonished frown.

“You were just being kind to the orphan?”

“That’s not—”

“You weren’t getting anything out of it yourself?”

“A sick stomach.”

Nodding sadly, Pony got to his feet. He nibbled the side of his glass. Then he said shyly:

“You didn’t seem in any hurry to break off.”

So I gave up trying to spare his feelings and said:

“Listen, I’d as soon kiss a skunk as you.”

“Yeah? A smelly old skunk? How about a rattle-snake? How would you feel about kissing a rattler?”

“For Christ’s sake!”

“Oh, I get the message, Tornado. You’re a great man and I’m just some kind of creep. I dunno how you can bring yourself to foul your lungs breathing the same air I do. I mean to begin with: I’m just a runt. I’m not a big, muscley, white-toothed all-American like you. Well, I’m not as dumb as you maybe think I am,
Tornado
. I never looked in a mirror—not once in twenty years—without bleeding a drop of blood that I’m such an ugly little runt. But then, there’s more to it than that, isn’t there, Tornado? There’s education. I ain’t had much. Oh I can read the papers and I know pretty well what’s going on in this town but I never got deep into history or literature like you. Or art. I heard someone say that you was a big wheel in art, Tornado. The only pictures I ever look at are on the sides of cans. Or in magazines—like muscle-building magazines. But I bet you despise that kind of thing, eh, Tornado? Then there’s something else. You’re rich—I mean, really rich. I heard someone say you could buy Vasari before breakfast. Maybe that’s true. Most people don’t realize just what Jay’s worth but I figured out a long time ago that to be in the real big time you gotta be honest. I guess since the beginning of the world they’ve been locking up and electrocuting crooks to try and discourage them. But some guys always go on heisting because otherwise they’re never going to get their head up out of the dirt. But the big money and the big houses and the big yachts and the big life—why they always go to the straight guys—the honest guys—the respectable guys. How many crooks wind up with palaces? Now hang on, Tornado. Flip yourself another scotch. I don’t get a chance to talk very often straight from the heart—like we’re doing. That’s some view, huh? Yeah, to continue: there’s innumerable reasons why you should shun me like a louse; your classy friends
would not relish knowing you were palling about with a criminal. Is that how you think of me. Tornado? As a criminal?”

“Yeah, as a criminal.”

“Only one stretch, though. And I was paroled in a year. See, Jay fixed the judge. No harm telling you that because it would only be your word against mine. Cost Jay a packet. A pretty good thing to do for a hired man, wouldn’t you say, Tornado? But you’re right—I am a criminal. You want to know how it happened?”

“Look, Pony—”

“This is great, talking like this, here in my apartment. Makes me feel almost like high society. What was it—yeah, why I’m a criminal. It was love. That’s what made me go bad. It’s a fact. I felt love.

Now, we were a terrible family: all runts and cripples. Two of my brothers were crippled. One of my sisters was blind. I was practically the Tarzan of the family, which’ll give you some idea what we were like. And always squabbling and bawling and
praying
—see, we all lived in three rooms which we shared with a good few rats and thousands of cockroaches. So home was a very good place to get out of. Every one of us had to do what we could to help. I started off with a paper round, went on to shining shoes and that’s when I met Rocky Recetti who ran all the gambling concessions on the south side at that time. I used to shine his shoes and we got talking and the result was, before I was fifteen, I was working for a racketeer. I was just a runner for a long time. But I earned more than any of my brothers and helped support the family. Rocky treated me all right but he had no real feeling for me. The same was true when I went to work for the big Russian. He was fair but I never had the notion that he was interested in
me
—in Kevin Roach.

Then one day when I was eighteen, nineteen, I was practising the clarinet in a practice room I used sometimes when a plump little guy—Italian I could tell—comes over to me and
congratulates
me. Says I play very well, asks me if I’d like to play duets with him sometimes. Sure, I say, what do you play? Me, he says, I play the violin—Neapolitan style. You wouldn’t believe this but we had these great music sessions for about three months before I discovered who he was. He was Jay Vasari and I’d fallen for him by then. He was the kindest, most generous guy I’d ever met. So it was natural I went to work for him. There were big guys in the organization but I had a special place right from the
word go. Then, one day, he puts me in a milk churn on the back of a truck to find out if someone’s double-crossing him and when I discover it’s only Tony the Trick who’s supposed to be one of his most trusted assistants, I was so mad I pushed up the lid of that churn, pulled out the automatic I’d only ever fired at targets before and killed Tony on the spot.”

By that time Horace, the sun was high and the buzz and clatter of Chicago rose from the streets. I stood up. Pony looked concerned:

“Hell, you can’t go now. Tornado.”

“Sure, I can.”

“Everyone says: Pratt takes what he wants.”

“What am I supposed to want?”

“Me. You want me.”

“The hell I do.”

Of course now I can see, Horace, the reason I got so mad was because maybe there was an element of truth in what he said. I mean, why didn’t I just pull out? I was pretty smashed but I could have found my way to the door. Instead, I just stood there, swaying, and listening to Pony’s jibes.

“Maybe you’re chicken. Maybe that’s what nobody figured yet. Yeah, that would figure—a guy like you.”

He kept hinting at disreputable things, Horace, or so it seemed to my addled brains. It irritated me because I couldn’t see what he was getting at. Now I figure he was doing it deliberately—cleverly working me up into a fury, like the picadors do with the bull. Or maybe like the giant. The after-image I have of that fearful morning, Horace, is of me planted like the giant in a fairy tale, glaring from side to side, beneath the flaring beams of the lifting sun, while a sprite or pixie, with Pony’s square face and fetching grin, swoops about, banging me with his small, hard club or firing painful arrows into me. Finally, he said something stunningly obscene about Harvey—about his being a faggot—and with just enough truth in it to make me wild. I gazed at the malice and mockery in his eyes and, remembering how touching he’d been when he was telling about his life, I shook my head in wonder. I said:

“You—bastard.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Pratt! You’re not kidding anyone. You’ve drunk a few gallons of spunk in your time.”

So, finally, Horace, I went to hit him. I didn’t swing back—didn’t telegraph anything—but just jabbed from the hip and that
jab should have connected with the midget’s Jaw. But it didn’t. He somehow wasn’t there and the force of the punch took me lurching forwards a step or two. Remember I was canned. But Pony didn’t seem as drunk as he should have been considering how much Irish whiskey he’d swallowed. I heard a disapproving click behind me, swung round to take another poke at him and found him standing steady as a rock, and holding an automatic pistol that was pointed at my belly. Amazed, I muttered:

“Gun—”

Pony grinned.

“That’s right, Tornado, it’s a gun. It’s a Browning .38 if you like technical details. Hey, guess what I’m going to do with it? I’m going to shoot slugs into you until you roll over from the weight of lead in your belly.”

It was crazy, Horace. There was no conceivable reason for Roach to want to kill me. At least—just as I thought that, a whole network of possible reasons lit up in my mind: people I’d slighted, husbands of women I’d seduced, businessmen I’d outsmarted—hell, yes, there might be all kinds of people in Chicago who’d pay a hood for my corpse. Yeah, but hell! Pony hadn’t known I was going to visit him. It was just too hell of a big coincidence to assume that I’d walked in on my hired executioner. I blinked and said:

“Put it away, Pony.”

I tried to sound indifferent but Pony just grinned again.

“Still giving orders, Pratt? But shit, man, I’m not one of your flunkeys. So—sit down!”

The last two words were barked so sharply, Horace, that I automatically obeyed. And the calm, wary thought glowed in my brain: he wants to kill me.

He stood there grinning, perhaps two feet away and, because he was so small, his head only slightly higher than mine. His
automatic
was held loosely, at an angle to the ground and it looked like he hadn’t much control. But I knew that Roach had out-fought and killed Charley Guzman, that he’d ambushed single-handed three of Mazetti’s boys and left them dead or dying. I’d heard that he practised for at least half an hour every day and that, to amuse people, he’d do tricks like shoot the hump off the camel on the cigarette pack at ten yards. I figured Pony’s aim was to make me reckless but, I suspected, just the fraction of an aggressive move from me would have activated him like some super-sensitive alarm system. His gun would have flicked towards me and I’d
have—died. That’s haw I had it figured at the time. Now? Well, I reckon Pony’s motive was to make me think those things but now I also know he wasn’t aiming to kill me. But as for what he was aiming at—I still don’t know what really happened that red morning.

He started to give me a rough time. He called me a rat. That hurt because I wasn’t a rat in those days. Maybe I never have been a rat but—yeah—I guess down in Peru I was certainly a rat and—okay, I’ve left rat’s droppings in other stables of the world but
then
—in Chicago when I was a burning globe of benign bustle—calling me a rat! How did he justify it—I can’t remember: said I was a rat with women or a rat in business. Yeah, he had some facts, garbled facts about—Jewish factory owner—or something—

The point is, I didn’t get too mad or depressed at first because I was pretty sure of myself, but then he snarled:

“We’re going to teach you a lesson, Pratt. We’re going to put you in a cage like the rat you are and we’re going to bring all the guys and dames who hate your guts and let them do what they want to you. A lot of them are just going to get up on that cage and shit on you. We’re going to give them all knives but we won’t let them get at you—not at first—they’ll just be able to throw the knives.”

On and on he went. And gradually my ironic amusement waned and, through half-closed eyes, I began to watch closely for my chance. But a moment came when I didn’t think I was going to get one. Pony suddenly broke off his filthy speech, shrugged, raised the black gun and said:

“The hell with it. You’re going to get yours now, Pratt.”

And pulled the trigger. I could feel the blood flee my face and a little whirlpool of dismay swirl in my brain. But I
went
on
 
feeling
it and for that reason knew that something was wrong—or right. The gun hadn’t gone “bang”. It had gone “click”. Then I
registered
Pony’s face. It had a wide grin on it and the gun was coming apart in his hands.

“Empty,” he explained and I saw the butt was hollow.

I shrugged to let the world back into my body and began to rise. Pony stopped grinning and an anxious look sprang into his face. He took a step back.

“Aw, come on, Tornado. You can take a joke.”

I didn’t say anything, Horace, but I guess I must have looked
fearsome. I advanced on Pony Roach. Now he darted round the drinks-trolley, begging and pleading.

“It was only a gag. What’s wrong with you? Tornado? We’re buddies. Okay, maybe I went too far. Forget it. Now, I’m warning you, Pratt—”

But he was backing up all the time. I wasn’t in any hurry. No one, but no one, had done a thing like that to Tornado Pratt before and I intended to pound Roach until his bones cracked. I kept my back to the terrace door and stalked him ponderously like a monster in a movie. He dashed from side to side—yeah, like a cornered rat, appealing repeatedly to my sense of humour. But there wasn’t a laugh in me. Soon I had him trapped in a corner of the terrace. He glanced about desperately and then hopped up on to a concrete tub. I took another step forwards. He babbled:

“It went too far, that’s all. I apologize, okay? Look, pal, just forget it this time—”

And then suddenly I froze, Horace, for Pony had made another little leap and a flash of sanity showed me he was now perched on the parapet thirty floors above Chicago. I cooled off immediately and shouted:

“Roach! For Christ’s sake—”

And he was gone. I blinked in amazement. I was suddenly alone on the terrace. Far below cars were honking in jammed streets. For a moment, dazed, my eyes followed the dip of a circling gull and then I stumbled forwards to the parapet. There hadn’t been a sound. In movies when people fall off cliffs or roofs there’s always a long, dissolving cry. So could be he was still kidding around. Sure that was it! There must be another terrace beyond the parapet, or a wide ledge or—